This invention relates to a method of starting up a computing device in a network comprising a dynamic addressing module and a module for providing start-up files for said computing device. It also relates to a server for providing start-up files and a corresponding network.
A particular application related to this invention is the start-up of servers in a network comprised of a cluster of servers. In this type of installation, but also more generally in any installation of computing devices interconnected in a network, a dynamic addressing method is indeed a preferred implementation. For this, a dynamic addressing module is provided in the cluster of servers. When starting up a computer system in the cluster of servers, it initially has no network configuration, specifically no IP address. It therefore requests one from the dynamic addressing module by using a specific communication protocol, such as DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). More specifically, according to this protocol, a DHCP request is broadcast over the network by a BIOS (Basic Input Output System) application that verifies inputs and outputs, executed by a BIOS extension of the computer system's network card. This DHCP request is received by the dynamic addressing module, which returns the network configuration for the computer system, also by broadcasting over the network.
Once the BIOS application has obtained the network configuration for the computer system, it is then able to send a request to a module for providing start-up files in order to obtain files that allow it to carry out the process of starting up the computer system.